Until the spooky magic begins, too close to the end, the book casts a rather lukewarm spell.
Howe (The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen, 2015, etc.) returns with a creepy, witchy sequel to The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009).
Though her former professor and adviser remains in a mental hospital, Connie Goodwin has turned her continued fascination with witchcraft in early America into a tenure-track professorship. She’s working hard to finish her book, serving as a mentor to graduate students, and living with Sam Hartley, her steeplejack beau. Her mother, Grace, continues to inspire exasperated affection; when Connie goes to visit her, Grace insists on tying an eagle stone around her wrist as a symbol of maternal protection—the first clue that Connie is pregnant. Grace also tells Connie she should break up with Sam, pointing out that generations of women in their family have lost their husbands young, to sudden deaths. As Connie begins to research this phenomena, she discovers a single exception—Temperance Hobbs, an 18th-century ancestor whose portrait sits above Grace’s fireplace and whose husband lived to be over 100. When Connie discovers a hidden box behind the portrait, it’s clear that there might be a way to save Sam—but the consequences to the natural world may be greater than they can afford to pay. The story cuts back and forth between Connie's life in 2000 and the women engaged in “weather work” in the early Colonial period, and it takes a long time to build to a climax. Howe clearly has enjoyed doing her research; Connie’s role as academic allows her to educate us about the history of witchcraft in America without too much lecturing. The characters are likable, but the mood and plot are slow to build.
Until the spooky magic begins, too close to the end, the book casts a rather lukewarm spell.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30486-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1992
ISBN: 1400031702
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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